


Back 20

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Brother Feels, Depression, Episode Tag, Episode: s15e01 Back and to the Future, Episode: s15e02 Raising Hell, Episode: s15e03 The Rupture, Episode: s15e04 Atomic Monsters, Episode: s15e05 Proverbs 17:3, Exhaustion, Gen, Hurt Dean Winchester, POV Castiel (Supernatural), POV Rowena MacLeod, POV Sam Winchester, Post-Episode: s15e05 Proverbs 17:3, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sam's God Dreams, Season/Series 15, Slice of Life, in a... Winchester kind of way, random sad quiet b-roll
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2021-02-24 20:27:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22003984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: A series of loosely interconnected episode codas for S15.15x05: The Impala is choked with the smell of blood. Sam swallows. Wordlessly, he pushes Dean back into his seat. In the darkness, he finds Dean's hand, punched up against his shirt and his crotch. "Hold it against the bone," Sam reminds Dean, and he feels Dean's hand move under his, press harder. Good.Sam lurches the rest of the way over Dean's body, his fingers find keys, and they are driving.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 12
Kudos: 38





	1. 15x01: Back and to the Future

It's like trudging through a dream, waist-deep in your own thoughts. Sam has none, but they exhaust him anyway. Pull his legs down. Maybe it's the bullet wound. It's not. Thank you, says the girl who was saved, but not really. Sam knows she saw the bodies.

Maybe it's for the best. Angels, ghosts, God. Throw enough at anyone and their brain trips the breaker. Sam's heard angels call it limitation. Scornfully: Human limitation. But it's a protective measure and Sam knows it'll be the thing that really saved this girl, this woman. Intelligent design.

He touches their backs. Stay present, he means, though they'll never know it because they don't know him, he is will always be a stranger. Most of the universe is not universal.

Dean touches him, but it's about the past, not the present. He says something about childhood, which is also past, but he's really still thinking about the moment Sam pulled the trigger, and maybe about the moment he didn't. How it hadn't mattered. Jack is still dead. Dean isn't, but he may as well be. He's still living in that moment, circuit-broken. He's the only one of the two of them who gives a shit about a bullet wound. To Sam all that feels like ancient past.

Sam looks at Dean and knows you don't need to be God to split universes. That, they can do on their own. Maybe that's his dream feeling--he's standing at the edge of the universe. It has more edges than it once did.

We still saved people, Sam insists. They saved 3,027 in Harlan alone, by Castiel's count.

Sam feels himself shift weight to his heels, like he's pulling away from an edge.

Deep down, he knows those words only matter because he's not thinking about the after. The bodies that girl will find again tonight, because they're seared behind her eyelids. The red he saw when Cas tried to heal this wound, the smell of it. (It's taste, Sam.) But that's how you get through this.

Sam smells rubbing alcohol.

Dean says something about you and me and every soul in Hell.

Sam tastes rubbing alcohol.

I like those odds, Dean says. He doesn't, really, but he likes the you and me. And maybe he doesn't give a shit about bullet wounds or God even whether anything matters.

You and me, Dean says. Fuses their universes back together, like it doesn't matter what universe it is. It doesn't matter what's left in, or out. So long as it's you and me.

Sam rounds the car, still feeling like there's too much dream left in. He sits. He sighs. He wonders what happens if you fall asleep in a dream.

"Where the fuck do you think you're going?" says Belphagor, and pries the door back open.

There is a gas leak in Harlan, Kansas.


	2. 15x02: Raising Hell

Poets have spoken of this, as they have so many things.

_Shape without form, shade without colour  
Paralysed force, gesture without motion._

Castiel has had years now to turn the words over in his mind, though he's never quite been able to escape the marginalia that attended them. Metatron's nasally insinuation: I've given you the world, Castiel. Every written word--the very soul of humanity! There are no secret between us, and yet so much difference. Because you don't understand it, do you. You can't, and never will.

But then, Castiel isn't certain most of humanity understands its own poetry. There's never time for it.

"It's ball," says Dean, without turning to face him. His hand hovers over a map, thumbing a tack. Castiel supposes Dean intends to be engrossed in important business, but the map is moot at this point--the vestige of an old plan that hadn't come to fruition and hadn't involved much planning. There hadn't been time, in its critical moment, to fill out the map, and so was effort wasted now. It's too late.

Dropped the ball.

Castiel wants to speak of things that matter, not balls nor pucks nor even Chuck. Things that exceed God's hand, unmistakably, because if God had ever known them he would not be the God he is. Things that, Castiel has found, exist only here on Earth. In those whose lives were sown here.

Dean walks out on him, exhibiting none of these things and believing in fewer.

\--

Will you check on him? Castiel asks. Dean won't listen to him, never does; it has to be Sam, because--

Sam...barks, is essentially what that sound is. "Yeah, I'm not gonna do that," he says.

"But--"

"Cas." Sam locks eyes with him earnestly, from under furrowed brow. "Let him be."

"He said he was angry. About ev--"

"He probably is!" Sam bites his tongue, takes a deep breath. "Look, Cas. We're all--tired, we're all trying to--"

Sam receives a succession of text messages, chimes tripping over each other to alert him. He scrolls through quickly. He looks back at Castiel. "I can't handle that right now," he says, and ducks toward his phone again. "And I'm not-- I'm not going to make Dean deal with that right now, either. It's not the time. He's doing what he needs to do. We have to save these fucking people, Cas."

Sam turns away and he doesn't meet Castiel's gaze again. Castiel sees color leap to Sam's wan face, his nape. He's ashamed of what he's said. "These fucking people."

They're belligerent and unruly and so deeply, incomprehensibly stupid. But of course they are, because what other response is there, to this thing no one has bothered to explain to them? To that which cannot be explained? It's all terrible and sad.

But Sam can't care about them. Not really. Castiel can tell from the way Sam squirms in his shirt, shrugs it back into position, and wipes his hair back: He hates that he doesn't care. Hates admitting it, perhaps as much. He is tired. He is trying to make it through.

"I trust him," Sam says, of Dean. Sam says it as though it is something very important to him, though Castiel is not entirely sure why. He's aware of this already. It is not surprising news.

Then Sam adds, "He'll be fine."

Trusting Dean with the world and Dean with himself are two very different things. Sam seems to think one comes less naturally than the other. One needs to be said.

Will you? Castiel does not ask. Will you be fine? There's no love behind Sam's words, no passionate conviction. It's pure exigency. They are both doing whatever it takes. It's an empty way to live.

Maybe Castiel is disappointed. It's not his right to be, but he is. He comes from a generation of angels who scorned humanity for their limitation--their easy surrender to emotion, to love and strange visceral belief. The ease with which their souls would twist in Hell. Pitiful creatures. He had not imagined that they might lose that.

To mourn and cherish Jack the way he has is something Castiel has learned on Earth, beyond the directives of Heaven. It feels wrong to be alone in this now. To feel as though the world is turning back on itself as he arrives.

He is losing them, isn't he.

We'll pick up the pieces later, Sam promises, and Castiel knows this to be true, in a sense. But they will come undone again. He tries to remember that he has felt this nothingness from them before, and he has been disappointed before, but maybe it's not sorrow or fury or pity he feels, but dread. Maybe it is different this time. It feels different.

"Of course you will," says Castiel. "If there's time."

Sam looks at him funny. But before he can follow up, another cascade of chimes erupts from his phone. He swears. Missed check-in.

Something's wrong.


	3. 15x03: The Rupture

She was sixteen years old and young Fergus was still suckling when she devised the spell. It has something of that flavor to it still—a young girl in a hard world. She thinks often of drowning her baby. An accident—she coaxes his legs toward the river and he is swept away. Her sorrow breeds more rivers. Or perhaps wolves come upon him, or pigs. Her sorrow ends famine. Hers is a sorrow that saves the world. With a baby she is only a mother, a beggar. With a corpse she is in mourning. And you know what they say about a woman scorned; and to be scorned by fate makes you a powerful woman, indeed.

On other islands, bards are writing tragedies.

But it was a hard life, in those days. A mouth to feed is a mouth to feed, and no matter how much it is meant to be a divine assemblage, often it is a blessing it is gone. There are many dead children. With a corpse, she is no hero. She is only a beggar in mourning.

So she keeps the boy, and she crafts a spell. She is sixteen and this is a hard age and while death is her own storyteller, not all stories are powerful. Too many die with no story at all, and with no story there is no Heaven, no Hell. No reincarnation, no Valhalla. None of any of the many worlds that witches know to all be true. There is only the empty.

Death is only powerful when it is grievable.

All spells need anchors and poetry: A splash of living blood, a final breath. But while the material might ripen, channel, magnify, it’s not the magic itself.

“It has to be you, Sam,” she says.

—

Death is an infinite vessel. She opens her sails to the gales that howl from broken hearts. She always has.

—

She was sixteen with a colic child and she thought often about compelling her own legs to the river, walking to its deepest heart and letting it swallow them both. She imagines carrying a spell in her belly that, when the fish and water finally ate her down to bone, would poison the river and kill the town, and each and every living downriver.

Oh, you’ll miss me when I’m gone, she swears. 

But there’s a reason witches wish to live forever. For too many, their story can be told on only one side of the divide. None will miss them, none will grieve. And so who are you without your life?

—

_I believe in magic, and I believe in prophecy,_ she says, because she does not need to lie. She is taking a part of him with her, and she doesn’t even need to steal it. He will offer. 

Sam Winchester has a large and foolish heart, and Rowena knows where to cut it. She can see the scars. And it’s not just sadness he’ll feel, but guilt, and guilt fuels grief and this is the arithmetic Rowena has always lived by. 

She is taking a part of him.

—

She’s sorry, she realizes. She’s sorry this will hurt him. _That’s why it had to be you,_ she realizes. She is taking a part of him, and she is sorry.

—

Hers is a sorrow that saves the world.


	4. 15x04: Atomic Monsters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In his bedroom, Sam listens to the water running through the pipes and stares up at the ceiling. It's like he can feel it coming down on him. The ceiling, the water, all of it. It's on his chest and he can't breathe and the only thing he can think about is everything, all at once. It's not sad. It's not grief. It is just the ceiling, coming down on him.

The first few days back, Dean gives him breakfast in bed. Dean probably doesn't have the reference for that, doesn't recognize that's what it is, but that's what it amounts to, frankly. The breakfasts are, in order:

\- A wilted Caesar salad from a diner in Harlan, Kansas ("I'm sure they were thrilled to see you again," Sam says. But apparently they hadn't recognized Dean at all, he'd been that scarce during the entire operation. Small miracles. Other than that, Harlan is fine, by Dean's standards, but it's having trouble filling its sheriff position, now vacant. The residents are worried this will cause an uptick in petty crime.)

\- A gas station Cobb, with the dressing on the side this time, so it's less wilted ("Newsflash, Sam. Bacon bits aren't real bacon, either. They're rabbit poop." A pause. "If they're carnivorous rabbits.")

\- The exact same gas station Cobb, but with black walnuts from a Whole Foods in Omaha.

"Buying black walnuts, obviously," Dean replies, when Sam asks him what the hell he was doing in Omaha. 

"Romantic gesture," says Sam. He looks at his watch. It's 10AM. "So you just… woke up in the middle of the night and didn't have anything better to do than drive to Omaha?"

"Look, do you want your leaves or not?"

Truthfully, Sam has never in his life woken up and craved a salad out the starting gate. 'Crave' might be a strong word to describe his relationship to salad, ever. But if it will get Dean out of his bedroom right now, Sam will marry this romaine.

"Thanks," he says. But Dean stays.

"What, you're gonna watch me eat now?"

"Ran out of British Bake Off."

\--

Sam needles his fork at the mound of bacon bits in the corner of his salad container. It's not that he doesn't want Dean around. Aside from having told an overly long story about Whole Foods not having been open when he got there, Dean's not actually interacting with Sam at all. Just sitting. Existing. Drinking a 10AM beer. Though from the sound of it Dean hasn't actually gone to sleep yet, so maybe it qualifies as a nightcap.

Dean snorts. "Yeah, I don't think that's how that works."

But Dean sits, and Sam sits. Sam checks his phone. It's like old times, or close to. Sharing silence until Sam gets restless. It just feels weird, to think too hard when Dean is in the room like that. To think about Rowena, about Jack, about failure, about the world. It feels too big, too private.

Dean knows exactly what he's doing.

"I'm gonna go for a run," says Sam.

\--

If there is something Dean doesn't get nearly enough credit for, it's patience. He's still there when Sam gets back, unmoved but for the four bottle caps stacked in a neat tower on Sam's desk.

"Just wanna make sure you're good," Dean says.

"I'm fine."

"Not the same thing."

Hands on his hips, Sam bites his tongue and nods at the ground. Rich. Real rich, coming from Dean. "I know. I just--you know. I need some time. To think. Uh, process, maybe. It's a whole new world, right?"

Dean nods slowly. "You can take as much time as you want. But there's thinking, and then there's thinking."

"Uh huh."

"Okay, 'uh huh' me. You know I'm right."

Dean leaves the bottle cap tower on the table when he goes.

\--

Later that night--or the next night, Sam's not sure--they have dinner. Dean is drinking soup straight from the can. Sam is eating leftover chicken and cereal.

"I'm just saying. If you're gonna heat it up in a pot, I don't see the point of putting it back in the can."

"What, you want me to drink it from the pot?"

"If you don't wanna wash a bowl, just get a sp--you know what, never mind."

"Yeah, exactly, Ramsay. I don't see you over there making cornflake-breaded chicken parmigiana culinary masterpieces."

Sam squints at his chicken. "What?"

"I'm thinking of drinking less."

It's abrupt, but it always is. "Okay," Sam says, like he always does.

"And it's real--the cornflake thing. You're just uncultured," says Dean.

\--

Patience.

Dean has the same conversation with Sam every time he walks in the room. Rowena knew what needed to be done. No, it doesn't make it feel any better. And yeah, Sam has plenty of time. Over and over again. They have all the time in the world.

He never tells Sam, _man, you gotta let it go!_ \--though Sam kind of wants him to. Maybe that's what Sam would tell Dean, or what Sam would tell Sam. He doesn't think so, but now he's not sure. They hold onto things differently anyway, him and Dean, so the advice never directly translates. All Sam knows is the _just let go_ never comes. Just _I know, you're right, you have plenty of time. You can take all the time in the world._

And there's Dean, sitting in his bedroom again. He's putting scars in Sam's desktop, treating his bottlecaps like a cup game with no prizes.

"Can you not?" Sam asks.

Dean stops. "Maybe we should drink more Snapple. They have jokes under, right?"

"Affirmations, I think."

"Fuck."

Dean starts sliding the bottlecaps around again. Stops. "Should I get sandpaper?" He feels his pocket for the keys, like he's going to go drive somewhere for a square of sandpaper. Probably Omaha.

"It's 2AM."

"And 9AM somewhere." 

Then Dean asks if Sam has flipped his mattress.

"What?"

"It's a thing. People--you're supposed to--" Dean makes a flipping motion with his hands.

"No, I know it's a thing. I'm just--"

Dean is already undoing Sam's hospital corners.

They flip the mattress.

"You know, you don't have to sit around in here with me," Sam says. "You seem a little, uh…"

"Yeah, I do." Dean redoes Sam's hospital corners. Sits back down. Resumes his cup game. Stops. Stacks the bottle caps again. His hands are shaking.

"Does it feel better?" Dean asks, of the bed.

Sam can't feel any appreciable difference. "It's nice," he says.

Silence. The bottle cap tower tips. Dean rebuilds.

"I guess I'm gonna… watch some TV, turn in," Sam says, after a while. He slips the second to last beer from the six pack at Dean's feet and finds a stand-up special on Netflix. It's very political and involves jokes about NPR.

Dean adds Sam's cap to the tower. Halfway through the set, Dean pops the cap off the last beer. 

He never promised sobriety.

\--

Dean is still there when Sam wakes, snoring lightly, head lolling crooked over the back of the chair. In Sam's dream, Sam had just driven them headlong into a semi. By the end of the dream, Dean's body had looked about like that, too.

Dean's body in reality wakes with a start the moment Sam moves, hearkened by infinitesimal sound. Just as instantly, he regrets it. His hands quest around in his jacket pockets before abandoning them for his neck.

"Oh, motherfucking shit," Dean hisses.

"G'morning," says Sam.

\--

"You want yours in that soup can, or are you good with washing a cup?" Sam asks, brewing coffee.

Dean is lying on top of the kitchen table with an arm thrown over his eyes. "Make mine Irish," Dean mumbles, and Sam's honestly not sure if he's supposed to oblige him or not.

This is how it goes: Dean calls his shot, and Sam gets out of the way. 

This is how it always goes. It's probably every year or so. Sam's never sure how successful Dean is, because he's never known Dean's goal, but he likes to think Dean is staying above water. He's not sure if that's enough to keep Dean safe, keep him healthy, but it is enough today. If there is one thing Sam does believe, it's that Dean owes no one an explanation. Not for drinking, not for stopping. He just doesn't. Sam believes Dean is doing whatever it takes.

"We don't have any cream," Sam says, of the Irish coffee that does not materialize. Dean takes the coffee, plain black, and tries to sip it without rising from the tabletop. He mostly succeeds.

Sam claps him on the shoulder. "You needed a shower anyway," he says.

\--

In his bedroom, Sam listens to the water running through the pipes and stares up at the ceiling. It's like he can feel it coming down on him. The ceiling, the water, all of it. It's on his chest and he can't breathe and the only thing he can think about is everything, all at once. It's not sad. It's not grief. It is just the ceiling, coming down on him.

\--

Dean is trying to make that cornflake chicken thing. Except he's trying to make it from memory, and today is memory is shit.

Sam wonders if that makes this easier. Dean seems to be struggling to string one hour beside the next, so maybe that makes all the talking, all the endless talking through Sam's bullshit, feel more novel today. They are having the same conversation they have been having for days. Sam has felt the same for days, but he welcomes the conversation. It feels real. It feels like time is passing. It is something to latch onto. It's not helping but it is.

They are having a conversation about chicken cornflakes at the same time they are having a conversation about everything. Dean can't string that one together, either. He makes a comment about needing to go to the store to buy cheese for the third time in twenty minutes.

"And chicken," Sam reminds him. "I ate the last of it the other day."

"Important," Dean agrees. "Butter?"

"I think we have butter."

"I don't know if it needs butter."

Sam sighs. "Well, if it does, we have it. So you can check that box either way."

"But I don't know if it needs butter."

Dean's staring at the bottle caps. Cornflakes, he says, turning one over. Chicken, cheese, butter. "Eggs."

"Eggs?"

"That's how you bread stuff."

"Oh."

Dean turns the last bottle cap over. "Chicken."

Sam presses his lips together. It's hard, watching Dean struggle. It's hard every time. "How long has it been?" he asks.

"Dunno. Long time." Dean is flipping the caps right-side up again. He's stuck on the last one. Takes a deep breath. He is trying he is trying he is trying. 

Sam can't breathe.

It's been about a day and a half, if they're counting that last beer. Maybe Sam shouldn't. It probably feels longer than that to Dean.

"But you're not planning to go cold turkey, though," Sam says. Sam's not prepared for that. Dean's organs are not prepared for that.

"Chicken." He turns the last bottle cap over. He stares at it, then shrugs. "I mean, we have some downtime."

"You're serious."

Dean nods. After all, they have all the time in the world.

\--

Sam spends the rest of the day reading about detox. Maybe this is information he should know by now. Maybe he's tried to forget.

Some hours later, Dean materializes in Sam's doorway once more. "Breakfast in bed," he announces, because apparently he is familiar with the concept. It's 4PM and breakfast is cornflake chicken, but it's close enough.

Sam shoots a quick look at Dean and knows exactly how Dean made it to the store and through the recipe. He closes out his browser window and its many, many tabs. He doesn't say a word.

That night, he dreams of demon blood.

\--

By 4AM, downtime is apparently over. Cheerleaders are dying in Iowa.

"More of the same, huh?" Sam says. "That's what we're going to do now?"

"This is the first time these girls have ever died," Dean points out.

The job is never more of the same. Even though they get in the same car and Sam packs the same suit and they drive down the same highway. They pass through Omaha.

"You know what's not open yet?" Dean says. "Fuckin' Whole Foods." 

Breakfast is the rest of the bacon crammed into a bag of pretzels.

\--

It takes two more bags of pretzels, one finger of whiskey, three beers, and a hot dog to get back home.

"Remember that time, with the ghost girl," Dean says that first night, in their beaver-themed (what else?) motel room. He smiles around his bottle.

"That _one_ time, with the ghost girl," Sam deadpans. "How could I forget that _one_ ghost we experienced."

"--and you got drunk as hell in the middle of the case, and you, uh--you had to jump in the swimming pool with your cast and everything later. That was great."

"I made you promise you'd kill me if you had to," says Sam. "On that case."

Dean coughs. Then he tips his beer into the trash. It makes a hollow thunk against the plastic. 

"Good times," he says, too loudly. "Always with the good times, Sammy. Thanks for that."

They don't say anything for the rest of the night.

\--

Sam dreams. He brings the ceiling down.

In the morning, another cheerleader is gone. By the end of the day, she is rescued. There's still two dead kids, though. One of them is in the trunk. 

When Dean takes an offramp too fast, Sam can hear the head roll to the other side of the trunk. It makes him want to die.

\--

"Did it work?" Dean asks the next morning. He smells like smoke, has ash in his hair. There's an empty glass in front of him. He's asking, _Did you wake up and feel better in the morning?_

"Maybe you should try it for yourself," says Sam. 

Dean holds Sam's gaze. Dean knows that wasn't an answer, and he wants Sam to know it, too.

But last night, Dean beheaded him. Then Sam woke up. So no, it didn't work.

Dean pours what's left in his flask into his glass. It just coats the bottom. He is trying, he is trying, he is trying.

Sam takes a handful of cornflakes for the road. What's left of the pyre Dean built last night should be cool enough now to take apart. Sam will break down the wood, collect the bones.

Some things, at least, can be buried.


	5. 15x05: Proverbs 17:3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Impala is choked with the smell of blood. Sam swallows. Wordlessly, he pushes Dean back into his seat. In the darkness, he finds Dean's hand, punched up against his shirt and his crotch. "Hold it against the bone," Sam reminds Dean, and he feels Dean's hand move under his, press harder. Good.
> 
> Sam lurches the rest of the way over Dean's body, his fingers find keys, and they are driving.

It happens quickly after Lilith is gone. Sam leaves what's left of the gun in the parking lot, strange and alien. Dean leaves blood.

It's hard to say how bad he's really hurt. He waves off help, says if Sam wants in his pants he damn well better wait until he's cold and dead. They have gauze in the trunk, though probably not enough, and anyway Dean's already thrown his jacket over the passenger seat, his shirt wadded against his leg. His boot makes a wet squelching sound as he shifts his weight to throw himself into the car. 

_Cock_ sucking bitch, Dean hisses as Sam ducks into the driver's seat.

"Keys," says Sam.

Dean stares at him.

"For the car."

"Fuck." They're in his pocket. Dean makes a fuzzy grab for the door, the dashboard--it's not clear what he's trying to do, but his motor control is already less impressive than it had been. 

The Impala is choked with the smell of blood. Sam swallows. Wordlessly, he pushes Dean back into his seat. In the darkness, he finds Dean's hand, punched up against his shirt and his crotch. Since they've made it this far, Sam doesn't think Lilith nicked an artery, but Dean's jeans are soaked warm. It's a good amount of blood. "Hold it against the bone," Sam reminds Dean, and he feels Dean's hand move under his, press harder. Good.

Sam lurches the rest of the way over Dean's body, his fingers find keys, and they are driving.

\--

It's a good amount of blood, but it's also not enough blood, somehow. Dean stops the bleeding six, seven minutes down the road, but he drops off hard, thick-tongued and goose-skinned. He shouldn't be this bad.

"When's the last time you ate anything?" Sam asks, he's not sure what kind of answer he's expecting. Sam barely knows what day it is, also couldn't tell you when he'd last had a meal. Typical, honestly, but maybe it's not. Sam's not sure anymore. Sam reaches into the back seat. They have ghost peppers and water. He shoves a bottle in Dean's direction.

"What do you want me to say? It was a liquor store. Limited options if you're not buying liquor. Hell, if you _are_ \--"

Apparently Sam had rambled part of that out loud. "You could have gone to the grocery store. We have one," Sam says defensively.

"Sure," says Dean. "I dunno."

It's not exactly the rejoinder Sam was expecting.

"Weren't you--" Dean holds his water bottle against his face instead of drinking it. "You didn't actually come back with food."

Fuck. Sam hadn't. He'd gone, he'd waited. He remembers coming back to Dean, asleep, and Ashley gone. He's not sure where the food went. Apparently not with him. It hits him then, how much they'd barely made it through this. You can't be just going through the motions when people's lives are on the line. Ironically, maybe it's a good thing there hadn't been. That Ashley had always, already been lost.

"You got blood on this," Dean says, of the water bottle.

Sam flexes his fingers on the steering wheel. Everything's a little sticky.

\--

Just drive. Justdrivejustdrivejustdrive.

\--

"Hey. Heyheyhey." Sam raps Dean on the collarbone. Dean cusses himself awake.

"You can't pass out on me. I can't tell if you're sleeping or dying."

"Both. Fuck."

"C'mon, man. We've got like, five hours, tops."

Dean taps his boots together, groans at the movement. "Ruby slippers," he mumbles.

"Dean, I'm serious." Sam jostles him again.

Dean sits up straight for a minute, two.

"Dean."

Dean jolts, laughs. He folds forward and mutters something about being so fucking tired. 

"Okay, seriously. Are you okay?"

"No. Wet jeans are a bitch," Dean snaps.

Sam ignores him. "I just mean-- This whole case you've been kinda--"

"Jesus, Sam. That was Lilith. She said-- I never would've--" 

Sure. Lilith put him to sleep. But she didn't make him count the minutes. She didn't put that look in his eyes, that look when he realized they were going to have to get this girl to sleep, track down some werewolves, kill some werewolves, loop back around to check on the girl, and then drive back to Kansas. And that was best case scenario. That was easy. It's not the version of himself Dean brings to the job, that look. Not when they're barely halfway through. Not when there is someone to save.

Dean sinks back into his own lap. Fighting nausea, if Sam had to guess. He wishes he could see Dean better--that it weren't so dark, and so much road ahead. But he can hear his breaths over tires against road, slow and shaky.

"Even before that, though. You 'like easy'?" Sam probes.

"I do!" Dean insists to the footwell. "Always have."

"Have you been sleeping at all?" Sam asks. Again, Sam's not sure at what point this decade--this lifetime-- (no, this decade. Sam's pretty sure 'decade' is longer) that's been true for either of them. But there's a difference between four hours and zero. Sam knows how Dean generally puts himself to sleep. Sam also knows what Dean had promised.

Dean comes up for air. He doesn't even point out that he would be asleep right now, if only Sam would fucking let him. Instead, he says, "Yeah, Sam. Because you make sleep seem like such a fun and relaxing activity."

Dean rolls the window down.

\--

Just past the state line, Sam stops for gas and returns with cereal. Six boxes.

"You need to eat something," he says.

Dean peers at the price sticker in the dark. "You know what's cheaper than cereal?" he says. "Beer."

But Dean eats.

\--

Whiskey, after a box and a half of cereal, three hundred miles, and too many stairs. In the time it takes Sam to wash himself of Dean's blood and clean out the car, Dean emerges clean and dressed, as well. He's walking only slightly stiffly. He has his color back.

"You did a good job not bleeding on anything important," Sam says, setting his phone down. Cas hadn't answered.

Dean clicks his tongue and winks. "Damn straight."

And maybe they are coming back. Sam takes the glass Dean offers and it's cool in his hands. Maybe the world is slowing, less like a jittery zoetrope, or a breath held until they get back home. The tight first in Sam's heart is ready to sleep, if not to unclench, and maybe they are coming back. Maybe Sam is coming back.

Then Dean lowers himself carefully into a chair and falls apart. Because God was supposed to be gone.

\--

Sam wakes with his blanket twisted around his neck. He puts a hand to the red rash left behind when he yanked himself free. He gulps air.

Dean's room is empty. So is the east-end bathroom. West-end, too. War room, library, kitchen. There's a knife in the sink. One of Dean's boots is soaking in a bucket under the sink, water pink and murky.

Sam checks on the axes.

\--

The Impala is parked outside.

\--

Dean's room is still empty.

\--

Sam would shout Dean's name, but sound carries strangely in the bunker. Sam doesn't want to deal with the echo. Sam doesn't want to--

He's not sure if he's still dreaming, is the thing. Reality is fuzzy at the edges. He's not sure which Dean is missing.

If maybe, Dean is not missing, but waiting.

Sam checks the panic room, and half-expects the door to close behind him.

\--

_You can have him back, if you'd like,_ says Michael, _but he can't stay long._ And then Dean is tumbling into Sam's arms. Dean's body is. Dean is. If he kills Michael he kills Dean, Sam supposes is the message. Because that's what Michael does. Uses people up.

Sam feels Dean's fingers close around his own. Then his eyes glow blue-white. _I am an archangel,_ Michael says simply. It is something he is, not what he does. 

_Dean got tired._

\--

Sam finds Dean in that back room. The one impossibly far from every other useful room, where Dean had made them drag that haunted TV that one time. Sam wasn't under the impression Dean had ever used the room again after that, and maybe he hadn't.

Dean is curled under a dead man robe in one of the La-Z Boys, his laptop on the ground. Netflix inquires, has likely been inquiring for some time, "Are you still watching?" He is part-way through _Clue._ There's an untouched grilled cheese balanced on the arm of the second chair, so cold and pristine it looks like it's made of plastic.

"Made you breakfast," says Dean, nodding towards the grilled cheese. Sam hadn't realized Dean was awake, that he even knew Sam was there.

Sam shivers. "The heat doesn't really reach down here."

Dean shrugs. "Netflix and chill."

They go quiet after that. Sam doesn't want to stay but he doesn't want to go, and so ends up standing in the doorway, trapped there.

It is quiet, and then it is quiet.

"We didn't even get lobster rolls, after all that," Dean says, finally.

"Yeah. Colorado's so well-known for its lobster."

Dean actually turns to look at him this time. "The hell are you talking about?" 

As though Sam's the crazy one. Sam just raises his eyebrows and waits for Dean to elaborate.

"You know, with the butler and the cubic zirconia. And Bobby's kid. That whole time--no lobster rolls."

Oh. Sam pinches the bridge of his nose. "Right. We're talking about lobster rolls from like, five years ago. Obviously. Dunno how I could have missed that."

Dean gestures at his laptop, as though that's supposed to mean something. 

"Wanna see what's good in Boston?" Dean is so serious about this he actually starts getting up. It is ungraceful.

"No," Sam says honestly.

Sam remembers one thing from that case, above all else, and it's the sound of five more bullets tearing through what was already a corpse. And here's one thing he's tried to forget: Dean's hand still shaking when he helps Sam off the floor. Driving home as quick as they can. Trying to sleep and forget.

"Are you okay?" Sam asks. It's always hard to tell how bad it is, with Dean. At least until it's not.

Dean shrugs again. Shuts his laptop with his foot.

"Not my story," he says. "Not my problem."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was curious about how they ended up with so many cereal boxes at the beginning of 15x06.


End file.
